Years After
by Shadow Padawan
Summary: Ten years since Dolokhov's proposal, five years since the Battle of Borodino, three years since Nikolai's marriage, Sonya's life has changed significantly. And maybe, just maybe, it's about to change again.


Five years had passed since the Battle of Borodino in 1812, a sort of minor anniversary. Most of the wounds were still far too fresh, the memories far too vivid, a consistent presence in the nightmares of those who lost loved ones in that war, who saw its horrors and withstood its deprivations. The memorial celebrations in Petersburg were meant to put an emphasis on the end, the fact that those events were in the past. This was a way to finally honor the dead and celebrate the living, to carry on and to finally let the past be the past.

Most people, frankly, had been too busy rebuilding after the war to dwell on all they had lost. The massive effect that the French invasion had on nearly every family was felt acutely every day, but it was seldom talked about. There were always far greater and more pressing matters. But, now, with the parade and the memorial, everyone suddenly had a reason to stop and consider, to remember and reflect. It made for a myriad of rather gloomy days as entire families retreated into the grief they had been forced to put aside earlier.

Pierre wrote from Petersburg, asking if they would come. _Natasha would like it very much, _he wrote. Nikolai had read her letter aloud at breakfast the morning it came. Countess Marya looked uncertainly at her husband and asked, "Do you think it is wise for us to travel. With our Natasha so little…"

"You can leave her with the nurse," Nikolai told his wife and instantly regretted it as Marya got the same look she often got when she was very upset with her husband. "I would like to honor my brother. I thought you would like to do the same."

Marya had not voiced any further objections. As for Sonya, she had almost offered to stay with the children. It came so naturally to her to offer herself up for the benefit of others, especially Nikolai and others whom she loved, that her own wishes became second hand, unimportant and pushed aside. But this time, something stopped her. She would not admit to herself that it was bitterness or jealousy, that she had been hurt by Nikolai's betrayal. She told herself many times that loving him was the greatest gift and that she did not expect anything from him. But such things had been easier to believe before the war, when Nikolai still claimed to love her, when she was still a young and attractive maiden. Natasha may have gotten all the male attention but Sonya instinctively felt that she was also not without the occasional admirer and, had she wanted to, she could have secured a suitor. But her heart had been faithfully set on Nikolai and she waited for him as she promised.

The war washed all those promises away. The world turned casually upsidedown and Sonya found herself both without her youth and without her beloved. She was not the sort of person to give into bitterness. In fact, sometimes she even managed to convince herself she was happy. She lived comfortably and was able to be useful to her family and if she longed for children of her own, Nikolai's two sons and newborn daughter were decent replacements and they took well to her.

But being selfless was not the same as not feeling. When Marya and Nikolai first married, she had cried endlessly without even explaining to herself why she was crying. Putting a name to her feelings was too dangerous, too damaging. She overheard some time later, when the Bezukhovs had come to visit after the first child was born, a conversation between Marya and Natasha. "She doesn't feel these things as we would," Natasha had told Marya, meaning that Sonya did not feel or understand her miserable position as Natasha or Marya would have.

That, perhaps, had been an even greater betrayal than Nikolai's marriage. Sonya could perhaps convince herself that Nikolai married out of necessity, to save his family from further hardship or shame. Natasha's condescension and defection to the side of the woman who had stolen Sonya's gambled-on happiness could have no explanation. If Sonya had ever felt completely alone in the world, it was then.

All that heartbreak and loneliness were due to turn into bitterness at some point. Sonya fought against that with all she had. If she allowed herself to be consumed, her life would lose all meaning entirely.

Even so, she kept quite while Nikolai and his wife negotiated the arrangements for the care of their small children for the duration of the trip to Petersburg. She wanted to see Natasha and Pierre – Pierre who was always kind to her – and her nieces. She wanted to honor Petya's memory – he had been as much a brother to her as he'd been to Nikolai. She wanted a fresh breath of air, to be part of the world at large. So she stayed quiet and rejoiced silently when the plans to go were made.

* * *

><p>Sonya kept a certain writing box in her secretair. It was the only object in that particular locked drawer and the box itself was locked. Inside was some money she had managed to save over the years – no where near enough to make a life on, but she took some comfort from having it – and a pack of letters, neatly tied together with a ribbon. Most of the letters she had kept were Nikolai's and most dated back to when they were still adolescents, innocently and passionately in love. They were poems, notes and drawings, little things he had scribbled down for her. Among these letters were also all of the letters which Nikolai had written to her during his first military campaign and none of the ones he wrote during the war of 1812. Mainly, this was because Nikolai had stopped writing to her personally by then, addressing all of his letters to the family at large.<p>

Among these letters was a single one not written by Nikolai. It was dated at December 1807 and Sonya had no idea why she kept it. She had not re-read it even once until Nikolai's marriage. It had stayed hidden in her lockbox for years, neatly folded up and separate from the pack of Nikolai's letters.

The night before Nikolai's wedding, Sonya locked herself in her room and took out the box, intent on burning Nikolai's old letters as a sign of letting go, of erasing from her heart and mind everything that she had hoped and lived for.

She did not have the heart to throw his letters in the fire, though. Instead, she picked up that single, forlorn letter, the one love letter she had ever received from the one man who loved her enough to propose to her. The man she had turned down with the pride and conviction only young, hopeless love has. She unfolded the page, which had begun to yellow at the edges and corners and read through the tears which filled her eyes and blurred her vision.

She could hardly see the words but her heart knew them somehow, nonetheless, although she had only read them once before. She read and cried and tried to recall why she had felt so scared when she'd gotten that letter, why she had been so appalled and surprised that his proposal made her stomach flip and shivers run down her back. Perhaps because she was in love with another and had thought it terribly inappropriate to feel thrilled at the attentions of another man. But sitting on her bed in that moment, knowing that her life and all of its meaning would forever be lost by this time tomorrow as Nikolai took another woman for his wife, she could not help but wonder if she had overlooked something back them. She wondered if her intuition had tried to show her something which she had been too blind to see.

_Mlle. Sophie, I love you as no man has ever loved a woman… You've changed me, made me a better man... I feel I could do anything with you beside me… Know, my dear Sophie, that I may not have the world to offer you but you and I, we have more going for us than you could possibly imagine …I do not ask you to be an accessory to my life, I want to fight this world together with you and to win… I want you to know, that no matter what your answer shall be, I will always be only a single letter away. Please, do not hesitate to call me your friend for I would give the world for you, even if you do not feel the same…_

She had refused him and he had left, never speaking to her again. Then, Nikolai lost a lot of money to him and Sonya had hated him and herself, because she felt her refusal had been the cause. _I should have been kinder, _she had thought, flushing and crying. Yet, she had kept his letter and the night before Nikolai married Marya, for the first time, she had half the mind to write back, to ask him…something. But that had been a moment's weakness, and Sonya put those thoughts aside as quickly as they came, disgusted with herself and terribly afraid for the future.

* * *

><p>"Nikolai, Masha, Sonya! Oh, I'm so glad you came!" Natasha called from the front porch as their party descended from the two carriages it had taken to get them up to Petersburg. Andrei and Mitya took leave of their nurse and bounded up the porch steps to hug their aunt. Natasha scooped them up and kissed both of them on their rosy round cheeks. "Oh you've grown so big. Mitya couldn't walk when I last saw him, now he's running around. Pierre, Pierre! Come here!" She set the children down and went to embrace Nikolai first.<p>

"Natasha, don't smother them," he told her. "Please."

Natasha ignored him and went to kiss Marya. "Oh darling, I'm so very glad."

Sonya hung back, watching as Natasha embraced and kissed the old Countess, greeted young Nikolai – a slender boy of eleven – and cooed over baby Natasha, taking her from the arms of the nurse. Finally, Pierre appeared and ushered them in. Before she could slip inside, Natasha caught Sonya's hand and pulled her into an embrace. "Darling, I'm glad you came. I was half afraid you would choose to stay at Bald Hills."

"Nonsense, why would I do that?" Sonya asked, feeling a stab of guilty frustration at her cousin's comment. She wasn't dead and she wasn't inhuman – why would she choose to stay behind when everyone came to enjoy the parade?

"Oh, I don't know, it's silly, I know. But I still feared. Come, come, I must show you and Masha my little Elizabeth. She is so precious."

"Two months now?"

"Yes!" Natasha glowed when she spoke of her children and Sonya wished desperately that she could experience that sort of joy. Instead, she merely smiled and thanked God that the people she loved were blessed with such happiness. Really, that was all she wanted.

"Aunt Sonya!" A small hand was tugging at the skirt of Sonya's gown and she looked down into the face of her eldest niece. The little girl was a mere three and a half years old but she was already a beauty – a wonderful mixture of Natasha's and Pierre's best features.

"Hello, Masha." Sonya knelt and kissed the girl on both cheeks. "You look so lovely in that dress."

"_Merci,_" Masha said, looking proud of herself for knowing a French word and obviously expecting praise.

"Oh, have you started your French lessons? How very nice. Come, let's go into the sitting room with the others." Sonya took her niece by the hand and led her along with the rest of the family. She took in the sight of Natasha's beautiful home, full of children and life and love, magnificent and warm. It was so obvious that a loving family lived here in all the little trinkets and arrangements. It made her think of her childhood in the Rostov's home and how happy and carefree she had been then. Sonya felt irresistible sadness at being the outsider in this picture. She had always been the third wheal, the one in the way and she was that now again. As much as her nieces and nephews seemed to love her and as much as Natasha proclaimed to be her dearest friend, Sonya knew that the whole thing was just an illusion. The children would pity her once they understood her position as they got older and Natasha had formed a far more genuine bond with Marya. Pierre seemed to be the only one who looked at her with warmth and understanding, but Pierre would look that way at anyone who had a great misfortune befall them without any fault of their own.

If Sonya had been a more prideful person, she would have hated them all. But an orphan from young childhood she had grown so accustomed to her lot in life, so used to the idea that the point of her existence was to make others happy or otherwise be invisible that she hardly allowed herself even a moment of envy of bitterness.

The sadness, however, was harder to deal with.

* * *

><p>The 26th of August came on a bright, sunny day, warm in the early afternoon and falling into a chilly breeze closer to the evening. The parade itself, loud and almost cheerful, made Sonya's heart ache. She remembered the day that Nikolai came back from the front for good and how relieved she had been, she remembered his letter after Borodino to tell them that he was unharmed. They had all been so proud of him. No wonder Petya had so desperately wanted to go out to war, to be a hero like his brother. His death had been a horrible blow to the family and Sonya could see just how awful in the looks on the faces of the old Countess and Natasha. He had been the baby of the family. Sonya thought, sometimes, that it was Petya's death more than anything that had driven the old Count to his grave so prematurely.<p>

After the parade, there was a picnic and families would wander over to the memorial and put down bouquets of flowers and light candles. The closer the day drew to the evening, the more somber the atmosphere got. Only the young children seemed to be completely oblivious to the nostalgic sadness that hung over the adults.

Nikolai had gotten Pierre to talk to him about his father. The Rostovs were clustered together, speaking quietly and reminiscing. Sonya ended up watching the young children play, drawing strength from their youth and innocents. There were other children there, some of them older, and at one point, Sonya thought she had glimpsed a child with very familiar features – a boy. But she dismissed it as she did not know any young children other than her nieces and nephews.

Sonya picked up her own bouquet and went to lay it down with the others. She said a small, silent prayer for Petya, for Prince Andrei and for all those brave men who had died protecting their country. She straightened her dark blue bonnet, which matched her simple navy dress, and was about to leave when something small and warm came barreling into her. Sonya stumbled and looked down to see a strawberry blonde boy of about four or five scrambling to his feet.

"_Pardon, Madam_," he said, blushing furiously. "I wasn't looking where I was going." The boy looked up and Sonya found herself confronted by a pair of stunning blue eyes. She was suddenly certain that she had seen this boy before or she knew someone he was related to because those eyes were so familiar and so was the rest of his face – the silky strawberry blonde hair, the shape of his mouth, the delicate cheekbones and soft curve of the chin. But as hard as she tried, Sonya could not think of where she might know this boy from.

"It's alright," she said, smiling down at him. "Where are your parents?"

The boy looked around and pointed. "My Papa is right there."

Sonya looked up and froze. A man in an officer's uniform with a handsome face and a confident gate was walking briskly toward them. He was older than Sonya remembered him, with more lines around his eyes and mouth, but otherwise Theodore Dolokhov had not changed a bit. His bright blue eyes were still just as sharp and his mouth still curved in the corners to form two half-smiles. He commanded a dominating presence like he always had and Sonya felt herself instantly fall into his sphere of influence which, back then, had frightened and flustered her terribly.

But the boy before her looked almost nothing like his father. Except for his eyes – those dancing blue eyes were an unmistakable Dolokhov trait. Sonya had not heard much of society, not to mention Dolokhov since Nikolai's marriage in late 1813 and their move to the countryside, so she could not think of whom he may be married to and who might be the boy's mother. It didn't strike her until she heard Dolokhov call his son by name.

"Anatole! How many times do I have to tell you to not run off?"

_Anatole. _The realization was so striking that Sonya nearly gasped. It all suddenly came back to her – the death of Countess Helene Bezukhov under strange circumstances, Natasha's hushed arguments with Pierre over something that neither of them talked about to the rest of the family and Pierre's meetings with Prince Vasili and Prince Hipplolyte Kuragin. So it must be true, then, that Helene and Dolokhov had been lovers and that Helene had died while giving birth – prematurely – to her illegitimate son after hearing of her younger brother's death in the war. The boy looked too much like Helene, too much like Anatole Kuragin, for that to not be true.

"I'm sorry, Papa. I was only playing." Anatole moved over to stand beside his father and Dolokhov instantly took the boy's hand.

"I'm sorry, my son got away from me." Dolokhov began. "He's quite adventurous. I hope—" And then he looked at her, met her eyes, and Sonya could see the shift in his expression as he recognized her.

"Sofia Alexandrovna?" He looked almost surprised. Then he smiled at her and there was warmth in that smile that made Sonya's stomach do the sort of flip that it hadn't done since the war. She flushed.

"Monsieur Dolokhov. I believe I've just met your son?"

"Yes. …I wasn't expecting you here. It is…very nice to see you."

She smiled softly at him, wondering at how he was able to keep his composure so easily, especially after what had happened between them. "Yes. I'm here with my family."

"The Rostovs?"

"Yes. They're over there." She inclined her head toward their group. Nikolai was holding little Andrei as Marya fidgeted with a button on his jacket. Sonya felt a dull pang of embarrassment. He must pity her terribly, must think her an awful fool for turning him down in favor of a man who married another woman. Sonya's pride flared at the thought and she instantly felt herself grow defensive, ready to rebut any remark he might make on the matter. Who was Dolokhov to judge her and her family?

"Oh. I see," was all he said, however, before turning back to her.

Sonya found herself studying Dolokhov's uniform. There were medals for valor and judging by his epaulets, he had attained the rank of Captain. "Do you still serve, Monsieur Dolokhov?"

"No, I retired after coming home from the front. This…this was just for the parade. _Etcetera._" He made a gesture as though to wave the whole matter aside. Sonya nodded to indicate she understood.

"My uncle fought in the war," Anatole piped up. "He was killed in the battle of Borodino. I was named after him." The boy beamed proudly.

"Hush." Dolokhov ruffled the boy's hair fondly and there was no sharpness in his reprimand.

"Your son is a wonder," Sonya said, finding that it was impossible to not smile when looking at this boy. She found Dolokhov's tenderness toward the child almost surprising, although, perhaps, that was unkind. Nikolai had always said that Dolokhov was quite family oriented despite his wild carousals.

"He's also a terrible handful." He smiled and Sonya smiled back. They stood like that for a few moments, not finding what to say to each other but Sonya realized that the flustered awkwardness and confusion that she initially felt had dissipated somewhere along the way.

"You're here for your cousin, Petya." It wasn't really a question. Sonya nodded dejectedly.

"I was there when he died," Dolokhov said somberly, now looking past her at the memorial and the heaps of bright flowers. "He was incredibly brave for such a young lad. I was…his death was incredibly unfortunate."

"He wanted to fight so badly. Wanted to be a hero." Sonya thought she saw a sharp pain in Dolokhov's eyes at those words, but it was only for a second. By the time she thought about it, the look was gone, wiped away by a controlled mask. She wished he hadn't barred himself off like that, though. There was something raw in that pain and it seemed to match Sonya's own suffering so much that she wondered if both of them might be better off if they allowed themselves to admit their sorrows instead of hiding them.

"Yes, that he did," Dolokhov agreed quietly, but the odd, far off look on his face made Sonya think that he wasn't referring to Petya. "Will you be in Petersburg long, Sofia Alexandrovna?" he asked after another pause.

"Probably not. I don't think Nikolai would want to stay for long after the parade."

Dolokhov was about to say something, then changed his mind. "We will probably go back to Moscow in the next couple of days as well." He was still watching her and that look made Sonya want to cry for some reason which she could not explain. She had found Dolokhov dangerously attractive even as a young girl, when he had first proposed to her. Now, she felt a strange connection to him, as though they were two puzzle pieces which were meant to fit together and which had to give exactly what the other one needed.

It was then that she noticed the mourning ribbon on his arm. The black piece of fabric was ragged and weatherworn. Most likely, it was the mourning ribbon he had worn during the war. And suddenly, the rest of the story fell into place and if Sonya had ever thought to blame him for his affair with Helene Bezukhov or for the duel with Pierre or his part in helping Anatole Kuragin seduce Natasha or even Nikolai's card debt, she suddenly had a change of heart. Not because she thought any of these things to be right, but because she understood that they came from a place Sonya could understand – loyalty to one's loved ones. If he loved Helene enough to raise their child and if he mourned Anatole like a brother and named his son after him, then there could be no doubt that his only loyalty lay to the happiness of those people. And if he had loved her, then his revenge on Nikolai came from a strong and pure feeling, and well, what a broken heart won't do in its throes of agony.

None of it was good, but life had wrung some of the youthful righteousness out of Sonya. It was enough that she understood.

"It was very nice to see you again, Sofia Alexandrovna," Dolokhov said finally, picking up a restless Anatole who began to instantly squirm in his father's arms, trying to look around at everything all at once. "I think it is time we went."

"I'm glad we ran into each other. I never got a chance…Monsieur Dolokhov, I hope what happened—"

"Please, let us not mention that." It was the first time he looked uncomfortable and Sonya felt a pang of guilt. She should not have brought it up.

"Of course. I do hope we will see each other again."

"Perhaps. _Au revoir._" He started to turn away, then stopped and looked back at her. "I'm sorry for your loss."

She looked to the black band on his arm, then the boy in his arms and finally met his eyes. "And I for yours."

If he was surprised, Dolokhov did not show it. He inclined his head briefly at her, then turned and walked away. The setting sun gave his light brown curls a golden glow and made the gold strings on his epaulets glitter. Sonya watched him walk away, feeling something deep inside her shift and change. Before they disappeared out of sight, Anatole raised one hand and waved at her over his father's shoulder.

Sonya waved back.


End file.
